The District Attorney’s Office received a federal grant to target gun-toting gang members by working more closely with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The Board of Supervisors approved the $177,000 grant from the U.S. Attorney’s Office this week.

The DA, confident that the funds would be approved, got a two-month head start and appointed Deputy District Attorney Eric Harmon as its new gun resources prosecutor.

As part of the program, Harmon gains access to ATF gun-tracking databases. His involvement also means that ATF investigators know that if a local case doesn’t meet the bar for prosecution by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Harmon will help them prosecute through the District Attorney’s office, said Gary Hearnsberger, Harmon’s boss and the head deputy of the Hardcore Gang Division.

“(Harmon) is becoming an expert on all of the state and federal gun laws,” Hearnsberger said. “So if we get a call from ATF and they were to ask, `Where should I take this case,’ we would have the expertise to say, `That’s perfect for us.”‘

That’s because some gun laws are tougher in California than on the federal level, such as assault weapon laws, Hearnsberger said.

Access to the ATF databases is vital, he added. Local databases only log gun sales that take place in California, so guns from out of state are harder to track. The databases will help expand an existing effort to track whether certain gun shops are selling a suspicious number of guns that end up being used by gang members, Hearnsberger said.

The grant has also allowed Harmon to do some training with the ATF to keep him up-to-date on gun trends.

“People are getting more sophisticated with hidden compartments in their cars to transport guns,” Harmon said. For example, air bag compartments are being turned into secret glove boxes, he said.

Getting involved with law enforcement is another benefit of the grant, Harmon said.

“What I was not able to do before was take a case from the beginning to the very end,” Harmon said. “Now I’m there at the beginning, advising the law-enforcement agency, advising them on techniques, helping with search warrants.”

That’s a big benefit to investigators, said Officer Bill Mixer, a gang investigator for the Los Angeles Police Department and a task force officer for the ATF.

Delivering a case to one deputy district attorney and keeping up as the case is passed along to several others is difficult, Mixer said.

“With this program, we take it to one DA, and they take the case all the way through, which is such a big benefit because then we can communicate directly,” Mixer said.

It also helps the ATF. Before, if the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to file a case, the ATF would drop it off at the DA’s office.

“But they didn’t have a direct line of communication, so it would bounce around to different DAs,” Mixer said. “Now they go right to specific DAs who file the cases, and boom, they take off with them … it bridges the communication gaps between the federal and state agencies.”

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.